Center for Social Solutions Hosts Panel: “Organize Against the Machine: Labor’s Response to AI”

The event, held September 21, featured panelists Elizabeth Faue, Merve Hickok, Molly Kleinman, and Lionel Robert.

Thursday’s event marked the first installment of the Center’s Future of Work speaker series. The panel discussion covered a variety of topics, from the public release of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL-E, to the future of automation and which industries may be next to adapt, to workers’ movements and demands for AI regulation. Across one hour of conversation, moderated by CSS Research Associate Caroline Egan, the panel addressed many facets of one central question: How do we fight for the dignity of human workers in an automated world?

Egan began framing the issue by stating, "Workers have been organizing in anticipation of and reaction to AI’s growing functionality and usability. WGA and SAG-AFTRA have made AI policy and regulation a central part of their demands. The Culinary Union is seeking protections from AI in their upcoming contract negotiations. The AFL-CIO has convened a working group to discuss artificial intelligence policy and regulation."

She went on to mention, "Concerns about AI and job displacement feel particularly salient in the wake of the Great Recession and the uncertainty of the early days of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These concerns feel even more real in the American Midwest where entire communities have lost so much as entire industries seemed to disappear slowly and then all at once."

Elizabeth Faue, director of Labor@Wayne and Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Wayne State University, provided historical context to the current debates surrounding artificial intelligence, pointing to other times in history when automation threatened workers’ job security. The most poignant comparison, Faue explained, may be to the 1920s, when machines alongside workers in factories became more commonplace. Even “the word for ‘robot’ is actually generated in the 1920s in response to an increasingly mechanized workplace,” says Faue, with the term’s etymology stemming from the Czech ‘robota,’ or, “forced labor.” Discussing the impact of workers’ movements for change, Faue clarifies that “I don’t think, given the logic of capitalism, that you can really cease increasing productivity,” but that fights for regulation of AI indicate that governments ought to “put protections in place” to ensure workers’ dignity and safety as we move into an increasingly automated workplace.

Merve Hickok, President and Research Director at the Center for AI & Digital Policy and founder of AIethicist.org, echoed the idea that further protections for workers will be needed in the future, emphasizing that “everything that can be quantified is being surveilled right now… But we still don’t have the protections that should be in place” to regulate employers’ use of technology to monitor the workplace. Hickok noted that a question integral to any discussion of workplace changes is: “What is productivity, and who gets to define it?” According to Hickock, discussion about AI’s impact on work ultimately becomes a question of power. Workers’ reactions to increased surveillance and automation reminds us, in the end, that “none of our lives are quantifiable.”

Molly Kleinman, Managing Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at the University of Michigan Ford School, spoke to the human elements of work that remain, even in automated workplaces. Using the example of self-checkouts at grocery stores, Kleinman explains that while work remains available “because things still go wrong,” the type of work humans engage in is changing. Self-checkout workers, for example, “are only dealing with customers when they are already frustrated… There are many emotional risks that go along with that.” Positive human connection in the workplace may be declining, but Kleinman is optimistic regarding “the level of attention that AI is getting…because it means that we might actually get ahead of it” in a way that we have not been able to achieve “with previous technological revolutions.” By simply being aware, our society and governments have an opportunity to effectively bring AI into the workplace while still maintaining the dignity of workers.

Lionel Robert, Professor of Information and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Faculty Affairs at the University of Michigan School of Information, addressed the “overlying assumption that there will be a lot more people than jobs,” clarifying that “that may not be true. There may be more jobs than people… But these are not foregone conclusions. We need to shape the way things go” so that workers remain protected at every stage of their workplace’s automation. The future, according to Robert, “is going to be a hybrid workforce,” but the nature of that hybridity can be shaped by humans, so long as we stay engaged with the issues at hand. “There’s a lot of opportunity for access,” Robert says. “Technology can enable that.” We should look to the future of automation with optimism, “but it’s not going to happen if we just hope it happens.” Robert reminds us that “we have to get in there and fight to make a better future.”

Keep an eye on our website for upcoming events in the series. A full recording of this event can be viewed HERE.